Simulation of industrial equipment can be essential in designing, prototyping, and demonstrating the different design options to engineers, customers, and other interested parties. Such simulations can be utilized to emulate virtualized operation of their corresponding physical devices over time, and may be further used in providing visual representations of the various simulated devices. In some examples, simulation and modeling applications may be used to define parameters for simulated mechanical components. These parameters ensure that the emulated equipment performs in the same manner during a simulation as can be expected for their real-world counterparts.
In addition to the physical industrial equipment that provides the mechanical functionality to perform various industrial operations, controller systems are also essential components of an industrial automation environment. Industrial controller systems are typically utilized to provide control instructions to physical machines to accomplish various tasks in an industrial plant, such as product manufacturing, materials handling, batch processing, supervisory control, and other industrial functions. As a result, by combining industrial machinery with the proper controller, an industrial system can be created that is capable of performing various operations.
Overview
Systems, methods, and software to facilitate simulating machines used in industrial automation are disclosed herein. In at least one implementation, an API is utilized to apply timestamps to data exchanged between a simulation model created in a simulation application and an industrial controller system external to the simulation model. The timestamps are then processed to synchronize the simulation model and the industrial controller system.
This Overview is provided to introduce a selection of concepts in a simplified form that are further described below in the Technical Disclosure. It should be understood that this Overview is not intended to identify key features or essential features of the claimed subject matter, nor is it intended to be used to limit the scope of the claimed subject matter.